Relativity Defines the Locally Available Share of Total Energy
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Relativity Defines the Locally Available Share of Total Energy |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Tuomo Suntola |
| Keywords | Zero-energy, relativity, gravitation |
| Published | 2006 |
| No. of pages | 20 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
The Dynamic Universe model introduced in previous PIRT conferences is based on a zero energy balance of motion and gravitation in spherically closed space. Such an approach explains the rest energy of matter as the energy of motion mass in space possesses due to the motion of space, and allows the study of space as a closed energy system. Due to the spherical symmetry, a universal reference at rest in space is a state with zero velocity in space directions, directions perpendicular to the motion of space along the 4-radius of the spherical structure. Following the zero energy principle all local energy systems in space become related to the universal rest frame. Conservation of the total energy relates local velocities in space to the velocity of space and local gravitation in space to the gravitation of whole space — thus replacing observer oriented reference frames to energy system oriented reference frames like intrinsically applied in thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and celestial mechanics or any mechanical system. A zero energy balance means that the energy of motion is obtained against release of potential energy, the principle first time introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in late 17th century using the terms vis viva, "living force" obtained against release of vis mortua "dead force". Such an approach fixes a local frame of reference to the local energy system instead of fixing it to an inertial observer as allowed by Newton's laws of motion and the Galilean relativity, the forerunners of physical thinking for the upcoming centuries. In the Dynamic Universe framework the conservation of energy in space is manifested through a chain of cascaded energy frames which extend the zero energy balance of whole space to local reference frames. As a fundamental difference to Einsteinian relativity, which relies on relativity principle and locally modified coordinate quantities, relativity in the DU defines the locally available share of the total energy — conserving the absolute nature of the coordinate quantities and making relativity an integral part of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, mechanics, and thermodynamics. In the Dynamic Universe framework, the expressions of the rest energy of matter, the energy of a quantum, and the energy of electromagnetic radiation obtain a unified form, which demonstrates the abstract nature of mass as the substance for the expression of energy and the primary role of the conservation laws. Based on very few assumptions, the Dynamic Universe model gives a coherent description of the structure of space and matter and produces precise predictions to physical phenomena throughout the scale from microstructures to cosmological distances.
Overview
This is the Finnish physicist Tuomo Suntola's presentation to Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory X (Imperial College, London, September 2006), and it is a compact statement of his Dynamic Universe (DU) model. The DU treats space as a three-dimensional closed surface of a four-dimensional sphere, contracting and then expanding along the 4-radius in a strict zero-energy balance between the energy of motion and the energy of gravitation. From that single geometric-energetic premise Suntola derives, rather than postulates, the rest energy of matter, the maximum velocity attainable in space, the mass-increase and clock-rate effects normally attributed to Special Relativity, and the energy of a quantum.
The break with Einstein is precisely located, and Suntola states it in his title. In Einsteinian relativity the coordinate quantities themselves — length and time — are modified, differently for each observer, and the relativity and equivalence principles are needed as postulates. In the DU, distance and time remain absolute and universal; what varies is the share of the total energy locally available to an object, fixed by its motion and gravitational state relative to hypothetical homogeneous space. Relativity thereby ceases to be about observers and becomes a bookkeeping consequence of energy conservation — "relativity is not related to observer or observation but to the energetic state of the object observed." Suntola sees this as restoring the practice already implicit in thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and celestial mechanics, where the frame is fixed to the system, not to whoever is watching.
The argument
The zero-energy balance of spherically closed space
Space contracts from rest at infinity, gaining motion against released gravitational energy, passes through a singularity, and expands again, the motion working back against gravitation until rest at infinity is regained. The balance condition is
M'c42 − GM″MΣ/R4 = 0
with M″ = IgMΣ and the geometrical factor Ig = 0.776 arising from integrating the gravitational energy of a 4-sphere. Solving gives c4 = √(GM″/R4). Suntola then performs the model's most striking numerical check: with a mass density of about 0.55 times the Friedmann critical density, R4 = 14 billion light years and the measured G, the formula returns c0 = 300,000 km/s — the velocity of light. In the DU this is not a coincidence but the definition: the speed of light in space is the expansion velocity of space in the fourth dimension, and the rest energy of matter is the energy of motion that mass carries because space itself is moving. Since the expansion works against gravitation, c is not constant but slowly decreasing, at present dc/c ≈ −3.6 × 10−11 per year. The age since singularity is 2/3 of the Hubble time, 9.3 billion years for H0 = 70 (km/s)/Mpc.
Rest energy and the abolition of antimatter as a balance requirement
Because the momentum p4 = mc4 lies in the fourth dimension, the rest energy takes the form Erest = c4|p4| = mc42 — formally identical to the E = c|p| of radiation propagating in space. Adding a momentum in a space direction orthogonally gives Etot = c0√(p2 + p42), which Suntola notes is "essentially equal to the well known expression of the total energy introduced by the theory of special relativity through a completely different reasoning." He argues that no antimatter is needed to balance the books: the negative counterpart of a body's positive, localized rest energy is the non-localized gravitational energy due to all other mass in space. A mass object is "an excited state based on an energy loan to be paid back with the completion of the cycle of physical existence."
Effective mass, internal mass, and a quantitative Mach's principle
Motion in a frame does not dilate time; it redistributes mass. Suntola splits it into an effective mass meff = m/√(1 − β2), which carries the momentum observed in the parent frame, and an internal mass mI = m√(1 − β2), which is what remains available as rest mass in the moving frame. Their product is fixed: meff·mI = m2, so the geometric mean is conserved. He is emphatic that the square-root factor "has nothing to do with Lorentz transformation" — it is derived from energy conservation, and he recalls that Lorentz himself first introduced it as an empirical correction to Coulomb's force between moving charges. The imaginary part of the kinetic energy turns out to equal the reduction in the gravitational energy of the object due to all other mass in space, which Suntola presents as "a quantitative expression to Mach's principle."
Cascaded energy frames
Real space is not homogeneous: mass has aggregated into galaxies, stars and planets, each mass centre creating a local "dent" that tilts the local fourth dimension. Each tilt reduces the local velocity of light by a factor (1 − δ), where δ = GM/r'c2 is the gravitational factor, and each frame's motion in its parent frame reduces the locally available rest mass by √(1 − β2). The rest energy in the n-th frame is therefore a product over the whole chain — ion frame within accelerator frame within Earth frame within solar frame within Milky Way frame within extragalactic space — back to hypothetical homogeneous space, which serves as the universal reference. Suntola shows that swapping "effective mass in motion in the parent frame" for "internal mass at rest in the local frame" leaves the force balance in the fourth dimension unchanged, which is what makes the cascade consistent.
The quantum and atomic frequencies
Reading Planck's constant in the intrinsic form h0 = h/c (units kg·m), the energy of one wavelength of radiation becomes E = c0c'h0/λ, so that the quantum is "the elementary energy of one wavelength of electromagnetic radiation in a closed wave front" emitted by N oscillating unit charges — a wave property, not a particle. Momentum p = h0f then means that conserving momentum is equivalent to conserving frequency, "which implicitly means absolute time in space." He endorses Hunter's soliton picture of a photon as an ellipsoid one wavelength long and λ/π across, noting the agreement with electron-microscope resolution and with the λ/π capture area of a unit-gain antenna. Applying the cascade factors to the electron rest mass yields characteristic hydrogen frequencies and a Bohr radius that both scale with the same products of (1 − δi) and √(1 − βi2).
The resonator and Michelson-Morley
A cavity resonator is treated as a closed electromagnetic energy object. Doppler-shifting the counter-propagating waves and summing the momenta reproduces exactly the same effective-mass increase, mλ/√(1 − β2), that a material body shows. Because the atomic emission wavelength and the atomic radius scale together, the resonance condition and node count are independent of the resonator's velocity — which is Suntola's account of the Michelson-Morley null result without invoking observer-invariance of c. He characterises the DU frame system as "a multilevel ether", each coexisting frame sensitive to its angle relative to the local fourth dimension, in place of the single static ether of classical physics.
Assessment
What is genuinely distinctive here is the model's economy and its refusal to postulate what it can derive. Suntola assumes closed spherical geometry and a zero-energy balance and then obtains, rather than assumes, the laws of motion, the existence of a maximum velocity, and the identification of that velocity with the speed of light. The numerical coincidence at the centre of the model — that √(GM″/R4) evaluates to 3 × 105 km/s for plausible cosmic parameters — is real and is essentially the same relation Feynman flagged as the "great mystery" of the near-equality of the rest energy and the gravitational energy of all mass in space. Where standard cosmology notes that near-equality and moves on, Suntola makes it a structural identity. Recasting relativistic effects as a redistribution between effective and internal mass, with the invariant meffmI = m2, is an elegant reformulation that preserves absolute time and distance while reproducing the standard formulas, and it dissolves the twin-paradox family of puzzles by making the effect depend on the energy frame rather than on relative velocity. The critique of Newtonian-Galilean thinking — that fixing the reference to the observer "was an obvious misconception inherited to the theory of relativity" — is sharply put and philosophically serious.
The difficulties are of two kinds. Internally, several key steps are asserted at the level of geometrical intuition rather than derived: the treatment of contraction and expansion as occurring "in environment at rest", which licenses using the inherent energy expressions; the factor Ig = 0.776, which is quoted as an integration result without the integration; and the use of complex coordinates with an imaginary fourth axis, which does real work in the derivations but is never given an independent justification. The mass density is fitted at 0.55 ρc to make the light-speed calculation come out, and the paper does not state what independent measurement fixes it — with a different density the identification c0 = c4 fails.
Against measurement, the sharpest exposure is the predicted secular decrease of the speed of light, dc/c ≈ −3.6 × 10−11 per year. This is a bold, testable prediction and it is the model's greatest strength and greatest risk together. Because in the DU atomic frequencies, the Bohr radius and c all scale together, Suntola can argue the drift is unobservable in any local comparison; but that defence, if pressed consistently, also drains the prediction of empirical content, and the paper does not identify a measurement that could distinguish the two situations. Similarly, the DU age of 9.3 billion years sits below the ages of the oldest globular clusters (roughly 12–13 Gyr from main-sequence turnoff fitting), a conflict the paper does not address. Nor does it engage with the (1+z) time dilation observed in Type Ia supernova light curves, or with the acoustic peak structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background, both of which any complete cosmology must now account for. Finally, the identification of the DU frame system as a "multilevel ether" is offered in the conclusions but is not developed to the point where it could be tested against the class of experiments — Sagnac, GPS clock rates, Hafele-Keating — that most sharply discriminate between absolute and relative formulations.
On its own terms the paper is careful, unified and unusually well-motivated for a work of this kind; its weakness is not incoherence but under-determination — too many of the geometric premises could have been chosen otherwise, and the paper does not show why they could not.